"The Laboratory" is a poem and dramatic monologue by

Robert Browning Robert Browning (7 May 1812 – 12 December 1889) was an English poet and playwright whose dramatic monologues put him high among the Victorian poets. He was noted for irony, characterization, dark humour, social commentary, historical settin ...

. The poem was first published in June 1844 in ''

Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany ''Hood's Magazine and Comic Miscellany'' was a monthly journal originally published by Thomas Hood. A total of 61 issues were published from January 1844 to June 1849. Hood made most of the original material for it. After his death in 1845, Char ...

'', and later ''

Dramatic Romances and Lyrics ''Dramatic Romances and Lyrics'' is a collection of English poems by Robert Browning, first published in 1845 in London, as the seventh volume in a series of self-published books entitled ''Bells and Pomegranates''. Contents Many of the origina ...

'' in 1845. This poem, set in seventeenth-century France, is the monologue of a woman speaking to an apothecary as he prepares a poison, which she intends to use to kill her rivals in love. It was inspired by the life of Marie Madeleine Marguerite D'Aubray, marquise de Brinvilliers (1630-1676), who poisoned her father and two brothers and planned to poison her husband, matching the narrator's actions in 'The Laboratory'.''English and English Literature Anthology for AQAA''

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Laboratory 1844 poems Poetry by Robert Browning